Sweet on you ~ a Valentine's How-to

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

I am off for a wonderful birthday with my family today... but first, I just wanted to post this tutorial before the 'last minute Valentine's rush' ensued for school parties on Friday. Have a fabulous day!

Sweet on you ~ A Valentine's How-to

My friend Rebbecca made these Valentine's last year. I thought it was absolutely brilliant! I filled it away in my Late Winter notebook so I could do them this year, and I love how they turned out! They end up being great last minute Valentine's because they are super fast to do.

What you need:

A digital camera

A sucker bouquet (I found mine at Target)

An exacto knife

A self healing mat

Directions:

1. Talk your little one into punching at the camera. What you are looking for is the fist to be in focus and the child slightly out of focus. It also causes a great many giggles... which are also great to catch on film. Do not be afraid to take lots of pictures. You will only be using one or two, but you will want your choice because the hand placement is kinda important.

See if the child can turn their fist with their thumb tucked under or to the side.

As much as possible, you want this:

Not this:

This picture will make the thumb look like it's floating next to the sucker, or that it's cut off. Not exactly the warm fuzzy valentine we're looking for.

2. Print out your pictures at a one-hour photo place. If you have one that does cute boarders then add that too... preferably matching the color of the sucker because that would pull the whole thing together even more. (I didn't think of that until I was writing this out.)

3. Now cut a small slit in the picture just above the hand, and then another just below the hand (above). The darker the area around the slit is, the more it will blend with the background and look like your child is holding the sucker.

4. Separate the sucker bouquet into individual suckers. I chose this sucker bouquet for two reasons. #1 Because they all have extra-long, thin sticks. and #2 the suckers are wrapped in small, clear wrappers so they don't cover up any of the picture. Added bonus; they kinda look like balloons! How cute!

5. Carefully slide the sucker (pictures can rip) into the slits in the picture and your done!

I just found your valentine/lollipop post on Pinterest (even though it is two years old). I love it! I posted the picture on my little blog as a link back to yours, I hope that is okay. (I used a few examples to show the idea, but for the record yours has the best tutorial).